


glassHeart.exe

by Mordsek (Rugiku)



Category: Elsword (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, F/M, I'm so tired, M/M, Why do I do this to myself, blatant self-indulgence, everyone is a shitty person, i'm not assed to type every single person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-08-08 17:37:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7767088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rugiku/pseuds/Mordsek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took Add three dimensions to realise he was looking for some kind of affection. In that third dimension, he knelt on smooth Hamel stone with silver arms pinning him as Raven breathed another name into the curve of his spine, so maybe it's not his brain that's the problem but his (oh so skewed) judgement. </p><p>He's no stranger to heartbreak. The crushing weight on his chest was familiar, where the whisper of a dead name sighed with a reverence that could never be his is still tattooed into his bones. It followed him even after he shattered the Water Eldrit and opened the door to another dimension.</p><p>A dimension where maybe he might have better luck... but when had he ever been lucky?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Compile

It took Add three dimensions to realise he was looking for some kind of affection. In that third dimension, he knelt on smooth Hamel stone with silver arms pinning him as Raven breathed another name into the curve of his spine, so maybe it's not his brain that's the problem but his (oh so skewed) judgement.

He's no stranger to heartbreak. The crushing weight on his chest was familiar, where the whisper of a dead name sighed with a reverence that could never be his is still tattooed into his bones. It followed him even after he shattered the Water Eldrit and opened the door to another dimension.

A dimension where maybe he might have better luck... but when had he ever been lucky? 

 

-

 

In the fourth dimension, Raven rejected him. There was no argument, the answer was as black and white as his hair.

Add swallowed his pain and carved it into Berthe until it opened the portal atop the spire to a new world.

He didn't look back. He told himself that he was only there for his mother, after all.

 

-

 

The seventh dimension dropped Add into the arms of the sky. It was like a dream, the time he spent with Ciel, and Add let the other pull him apart with sweets and sweeter words, falling more in love.

Then they crossed paths with Raven and Add's violet sky became a breaking dawn.

Perhaps it was because he was doomed to make the same mistakes, or perhaps it was an effect of the shattered glass heart born in him.

Add saw clear blue skies, perfect for a bright sun, and he silently crept away in dawn's dim tailcoat. Forgotten, he supposed.

At least he didn't have to leave a note.

 _It's okay_ , he had reasoned, _because Ciel has_ **_that_ ** _person now and he's always been the second choice. Even for himself._

 

-

 

(In the next dimension and the dimension after that, his mother was still dead and he let no one touch him, even as he sewed his skin together from where Ciel had unravelled the stitches with quick and gentle words.)

 

-

 

It was sharp wit and a biting tongue that brought him out in another dimension. Add remembered how to laugh and grin with a mouthful of knives, muss hair with a flick of his wrist.

But he saw a thirst that he could never quench so Add kissed hair the colour of the tulips that grew in a long-forgotten garden and left.

 

-

 

The world after that settled into his skin the same way it had settled into the other two.

He's not sure how they met and he never asked. Meetings, our Add had thought to himself, should be remembered by the people who cared, and that was not him. 

Definitely not him.

He decided that he was intense. _They_ were intense, even more so together. They were the pressure and power that changed gas to liquid and liquid to solid until it sublimated into gas again - that was what they were.

It was in the way Mastermind's nimble fingers skated down spines, across sensitive skin and over hip bones, the way Psyker learned where and how to lick and bite and embrace, where pain tolerances ended and fingerprint bruises began. It was where Esper, our Add, learned to breathe and say his name with the same extollation as the one lodged between his shoulder blades, swallow love on breath that tasted like coffee and steel, and hum lullabies to faded memories while combing soft, white hair.

Too much of anything had always made him want to vomit, and this world was not an exception.

The other two could sense it. They are were all the same person, after all, but the pieces of _their_ hearts fit better than his jagged edges.

(He still left shards, unknowingly, with them.)

He promised to come back one day, and perhaps he will, when he figures out how to return to previous dimensions, so it’s not a complete lie when the words leave his mouth. They understand, nod and kiss him goodbye.

Two weeks into the new world, Add wants to run back to their love.

 

-

 

Silver and green, they became a happy couple as Add hovered on the periphery and watched as they taunted him in their ignorance.

Rena made a lovely mother, he knew this in the way she cared for the children around her. Somehow, Add found himself in her orbit as her gentle hands placed coffee with a hint of chocolate in his.

Like she knew. She knew there was still a child begging for a mother’s love underneath the layers of cold shoulders and caustic snarls.

Rena provided and Add didn’t _want_ to accept, only it had been _so long_ and he thought to himself just this once… just this one time in this unnumbered dimension, where he’ll take what is offered to him because-

Mother.

Add gave Rena one show of affection after he announced his departure. She opened her arms after everyone had gone their ways and he stepped into the circle of her embrace after a moment of hesitation.

It wasn’t the same, but Add no longer had a frame of reference to truly say whether or not his mother smelled of herbs and tanned leather. Rena murmured platitudes into his ear and he almost believed them.

Almost, because he saw the way their fingers intertwined and the way they smiled at each other as they walked away, like they were the only people in the universe.

Jealousy festered deep in Add’s heart and made his spine ache.

 

-

 

The twenty-third dimension was destroyed. 

He ripped it apart in a fit of anger, and when he was shaking off the vertigo and drain of moving across space and time, he regretted. Oh, how he regretted.

That Raven... had not deserved his death. Neither had that Rena, even if she had slapped him hard enough to see stars.

Add should not have said she was useless. Should not have told her the only reason why Raven looked at her like that was because he only saw someone else. Should not have tried taking someone who was not his, would never _be_ his regardless of the teeth marks under his plug suit.

Add should not have pulled Raven aside and kissed him until the taste of herbs and fruit was replaced with coffee and bitter lust.

He was selfish and juvenile, cruel and stubborn. Add never should have rigged Raven's arm into a collapsing black hole when his ultimatum was refused.

He told himself he should never be allowed a relationship with that man. It would only lead to disaster.

 

-

 

And then he woke to the smooth gait of a woman he'd always been wary of.

When he'd convinced her to let him down from her back, he wobbled once and was immediately scooped up. He had scowled and Elesis had laughed brightly into the summery air.

She gave him an old pair of clothes, soft and sweet-smelling, and cooked for him. A little too salty, the meat a little too tough, but it was edible and much better than his own cooking.

Elesis didn't press him and he didn't offer any insight.

He stayed at the little cottage halfway between Fahrahman and Velder, tinkering with his dynamos and buying medicine whenever Elesis was too hungover to walk to her recovering hometown.

A week after he was found, Elesis prompted him to spar with her.

Practice, she'd slurred.

He was thrown on his back in less than ten seconds. She had laughed her bright, annoying laugh and offered him a hand up.

(He accepted.)

Maybe it was a little too early for sparring, she had said, and got him to do enough exercise for him to flop onto his bed and groan in pain afterwards.

There was always something about her that drew Add to Elesis, yet put him off. She never yelled at him, even when he lost himself in thought and dropped her plates on the kitchen floor or pushed too hard when he helped her with stretches. Even when her younger brother arrived, all refined edges and chivalry, Add had taken an immediate dislike to him. They'd gotten snippy and Elesis had thrown pillows at the both of them.

The next day truly frightened Add. He woke to the noise of Elesis's howling voice and the unimpressed bark of Elsword.

The front door slammed.

He heard the liquor cabinet open.

Add crept out of his room and Elesis greeted him with a smile that was stretched too thin, too bright.

He made coffee and snatched the bottle Elesis was trying to down straight and dumped a fair amount into both their mugs.

She asked if he was going to ask and he said no, shut up I’m going to talk about myself.

And he told her. Everything he could remember of his mother - not much anymore - and the worlds he went to. Even when some of Add’s memories blurred into one another, Elesis didn’t question continuity.

He told her about how people were different and how people were the same. Constants and variables. Always a search party. Always a thief. Always someone he looked at from afar.

Elesis had given him a severe look at his last world, but her hand on his ankles, where he’d thrown them onto her lap, didn’t move.

Then she asked whether or not he knew someone named Ara.

Add wracked his memories of blurred faces passing in and out of his way.

Maybe, he had said. Why?

Elesis had sighed and put her mug on the low coffee table. She didn’t reply, but stared past him with a deep melancholy that struck Add because he’d seen it before.

He’d seen it in himself.

Did you end up telling her? His voice is low when he asks and Elesis pulls a wry smile that is a shadow of what he’s used to.

She told him no... because Ara had died before she could.

Suddenly, his pining seemed even more childish than before. Elesis didn't even have the ability to hit undo and start a new game. And yet, she listened and did not judge, did not plead.

(He feels lighter.)

His coffee is cold when he puts it next to Elesis’s mug, shifting so she can lean her head on his shoulder. In the silence between them, he offered to try. Jump back in time, just a little jump, and stop Ara’s death.

Elesis cries. Maybe she heard the hesitation in his voice. A world of branching possibilities that spelt happiness for only one of her. Maybe it was something else.

They end up sprawled over the couch, Elesis heavy on his chest and tears soaking his shirt, but mercifully asleep.

Elsword thanks him after, when the woman is sleeping soundly in her bed. For what, Add isn't sure but that's okay. His heart shakes but does not shatter.

Add tells them he's leaving the next morning.

 

-

 

The new world opens for him, he sees a dark-haired woman with sweetness and suffering in her eyes, and tells her she should talk to the red-haired woman in her future.

She laughs and he walks alongside her, picking her up every time she fell, until she sees a heart blazing in the heat of battle.

Esper leaves after the petal shower settles and both Ara and Elesis kiss him on the cheek, eyes bright and resplendent in white. He smiles at them, true and glad. He hopes he'll remember presenting their rings years and years in his future.

 

-

 

Another immeasurable world, another realm lost within. Same names, same faces, the sameness presses down upon him and he wonders if he's gone mad.

Add joins the search party somewhere around Hamel, practiced ease and rehearsed lines from saying 'I will help' again and again _and again and_

The tea is unexpected.

The caffeine barely affects him, but it's warm and the prince of Hamel sits next to him with his own book and steaming mug.

Esper's curiosity gets the better of him and he asks Chung about his reading material, if he can just take a little peek-

Designs, plans, research he's never seen before but vaguely remembers fill Add's vision in a swirl of lanolin and ink, and then there's a steadying hand on his arm.

Chung picks up his father's research notes smiling thinly at Add and he feels guilt for dropping something so precious. Add apologises, the first time in months? years? worlds? (he can't remember)

The prince comes back the next day to read. Add notices his presence when a cup of tea materialises by his elbow.

And so the routine went on. Add tested universe divergence and Chung tinkered with Freiturnier in the background. Tea would sometimes find its way to Add's lips and sometimes materials Chung needed found their way into the pile of scraps in the time traveller's room.

They worked well on the battlefield, he found. He could run in and deliver damage while Chung covered him from further away. There was very little that they two could not destroy on their own.

Smiling became easier with the prince, less abrasive for both the action and with others. Chung smiled so much for someone carrying the weight of a kingdom on his shoulders that Add couldn't help but mirror the prince's grins.

He didn't think he'd ever see Chung not smile.

It was supposed to be simple, climb the empty mountain range, pick up some materials, climb down.

There was not supposed to be a monster hungry and awake at the peak.

They were so very, very outclassed by the heaving, black serpent that stared down with its multitudes of purple eyes, pearl glowing ominously.

They fought hard and even tried to run, but the monster had surrounded them in an impenetrable wall of scales and the flaming breath of something that should have stayed asleep in the belly of the mountain.

Add will never forget the sound of armour creaking and giving way between fangs, the muffled shriek of metal and man, the dull thud of Chung hitting the ground. Unmoving.

Freiturnier was shattered. The core sputtering in the last throes of energy fallout.

It's his last hope.

 

-

 

Never again.

If Esper could tear out his wrecked heart in order to be free of his torment just once, he would happily die in peace.

He does not expect _her_ to help him.

He gives her access to his memory logs when he explains his proposition and she stares balefully the whole way, through the blood on his hands and the bile on his chin. There’s memories there even he doesn’t remember and it churns in his gut, seeing it laid out on a screen like a shelf of home movies.

He tells her how he can’t do it. He can’t go on like this. In the moment of sanity (insanity) he has, Add tells her that he’ll only go on to destroy more and more until everything gives out on him.

(The love he’s had for anything has always been too much, so it’s time to dig out the glass)

It hurts the first time, when the machine clamps onto his back and needles drill into his delicate skin, and he gasps out in pain.

Is it supposed to be like this? He had rasped, when he managed to regain control over his tongue.

Would you prefer to remain as you are? She had replied, yellow eyes flat and unrelenting.

It flows out of him, dark and viscous. Somehow he knew his feelings were about as ugly as the sludge in his veins, but seeing it fill the strange canisters in a Battle Seraph’s laboratory was another matter.

The second time, he wonders how Eve survived the pain of draining something inherently human (was he human? or a monster living on borrowed time?) until he remembers she’s a Nasod. Does she feel pain? She had emotions before, but it does not mean the extraction wasn’t excruciating for her as well. _And_ she was alone with nothing but a few Nasod bots for company. Maybe she didn’t feel pain that came from the body, only suffered from being too perfect.

But it works. He can think back on the times where he may have felt something, the rejection and all the deaths, by his hand or otherwise, and not feel anything at all. No heartache, no regret, no sadness.

Nothing.

Add no longer wanted to tear out his heart when he thought of Ciel, throw up when he heard the echos of creaking armour in his ears, or cry when he remembered a lovely wedding under the boughs of an ancient tree. He no longer wanted someone that was always never his and never will be.

There’s a certain clarity that comes with being pumped full of Light El until he can see the shadows of the bones in his fingers. The light fades eventually and his reflection looks better to him. The madness is fading from his eyes and his mouth doesn’t hang in a perpetual frown anymore.

He thinks the Elesis who cried on his shoulder would be proud.

He thinks the Rena who loved him like her own kin would be happy.

He thinks the Aisha who bantered with him until sunrise would be glad.

He can’t manage to force himself to smile.

 

-

 

Esper is being hooked into the machine _(one last time almost there just once more)_ when he hears the door slide open with a pneumatic hiss.

The person calls for Eve and Add turns his head to meet golden eyes, watch the words die in his throat.

Raven looks alarmed, as if he didn’t expect to see someone strung up in wires and pipes, black slime shifting through the translucent plastic like great slugs that slithered through his veins, and maybe he blanches slightly at the sight of such a creature like him _staring at him_.

It has to be what the swordsman is thinking, he thought it in every other world. After all, Add has seen it in their eyes - the way Raven always looked at him like he was something contemptible and _filthy-_

Esper feels… nothing.

It’s working.

Eve intercepts Raven and Add goes back to staring absently at the floor tiles, pleased yet not (because feeling anything was blessedly impossible for him now) that Eve’s promise had pulled through.

He’s free.

And yet, he recognises the sound of distress in a voice where before, he’d have done anything to comfort.

Was this any different? Did he still want to soothe someone who had never looked at him with anything but suspicion?

He’d tried so hard and for so long, and yet all he could think about was his mother and how much his back ached because a constant had murmured a dead woman’s name into his skin.

No. This was worth it. Ridding himself of attachment was the only way he could possibly live happily, maybe it would even help him get back to his real mother. Not the fakes that had shielded the other hims, cried as everything was crushed beneath his heel.

He’d give everything to go back to a time where he is happy and tormented by nothing. Too much love had broken him and cauterising it in fire and light might finally give him peace, even if it meant melting his shattered heart into something new.

Eve’s short, clipped voice buzzes in his ear, warning him that she is about to begin the final procedure. Clear doors close around him and just as the machine whirs to life, Esper hears a loud, crunching thump against the glass wall.

He has no time to process anything because pain sears into his spine, chasing away the world until all that is left is the creaking of his strained bones and the feeling of being burnt alive from within. It hurts so much it's impossible for him scream but slowly, he can sense it, the name that was whispered into his bones fades under the relentless torrent of magic poured into his fragile body.

Finally, _finally_ he won't be hurt again.

Then it's as if he's in sudden freefall, cut off and thrumming like a live wire. Belatedly, Esper realises the machine was shut off and the El is dissipating in his skin.

Something touches his arm and Add jerks in response, a hoarse cry clawing it's way out his throat.

"Hey, whoa- I'm not going to hurt you." An arm carefully wraps around his front, supporting his weight as the machine lowers Add to his knees.

He smells ash and the tang of iron in every uneven breath he takes, and Add thinks this has to be some hallucination he dreamed up. He's passed out from pain and his brain is supplying him one last illusion before the part that yearned for the person cradling him finally croaks and leaves him alone.

The needles are pulled out of his back one by one and Add numbly registers blood running down his back. The pump is detached with a horrible sucking noise and Esper realises the pained gasping is coming from him.

His back feels like it's been flayed open and the mounting hurt is turning the corners of his vision black.

"Hey- hey, stay with me-!"

No, he thinks. Don’t let it be this world, of all worlds.


	2. Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Add wakes, lying on his front, in an unfamiliar bed.

Add wakes, lying on his front, in an unfamiliar bed.

Granted, no bed ever felt familiar to him much save one and he wonders if he ever left his other selves to continue a goose chase.

It certainly feels like a dream - everything feels fuzzy and slow, his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. Every fibre of his being aches distantly and, looking at the concoction dripping into what he assumes is a drip plugged into his arm, he'd be thankful for it to stay that way.

"Hey." Esper’s eyes flicker over to the figure sitting beside his bed and he blinks slowly.

A dream, probably. Or he's hallucinating again.

"You doing better?" Add likes the way the hallucination looks at him with concern so he nods a fraction and swallows dryly.

"Here." The hallucination leans over and plucks something off a table and Add notices something strange, something that grounds him in reality.

Raven’s arm left arm is gone.

Of course, Esper knew it’d have to be missing for the Nasod arm to exist but even the lovely prosthetic is missing. There's only a stump swathed in bandages. Scars spider up from beneath the dressing and Esper is so enraptured with the silvery stripes that he startles when a cup is presented to him.

A tube hangs from the lip of the glass and it takes a moment for Esper to realise it's a straw.

No straw should be that red and curly.

Still, there's probably water in that cup and Esper’s throat is drier than the Sander desert so he closes his lips around the dumb straw and drinks.

When he's done, Esper eases himself back into a relatively comfortable position on the bed, trying not to agitate his back.

“Where’s the arm?” He asks, before his brain can catch up with his mouth.

Raven throws a bemused look at the time traveller that’s painted with what could be relief and replies calmly.

“Repairs. I kind of broke it and Eve wouldn't fix it with me attached.” The older man shrugs with a smile.

Something about the explanation sounds warning bells in Add’s head but everything is so pleasantly numb that the thought almost slips right out the cracks of his mind. Instead, he hums a noise that’s halfway between dismissal and understanding, eyelids fluttering in exhaustion. Was he supposed to be this tired?

“Get some rest… I’ll…”

Esper is asleep before he hears the end of the sentence.

 

-

 

Raven is still there, still missing an arm, when Add wakes up next. This time, he feels the burning in his back more clearly and it’s only made worse by the awful crick in his neck. At least the sun has gone down and the room is a pleasantly cool temperature against his heated back.

Very quietly, Add tries calling for his dynamos - something he should have done before - but they predictably don’t respond. Even the displays don’t show up in his vision and Esper guesses they may be out of battery. Or destroyed.

The swordsman is reading something, staring at a screen with such intensity that Add assumes that it's plans for a battle. He vaguely recognises the screen as one of Eve’s.

Add carefully turns his head, hissing when pain flares up all over his body.

The bed suddenly dips near his hip and warm fingers brush over his neck. Esper sucks in a gasp of air that escapes in a soft sigh when Raven rubs circles into his tense muscles with gentle fingers. A soft noise of pleasure comes from the time traveller and he realises he’s practically purring under the hands of a swordsman who has never returned his feelings.

Esper goes still and forces himself away until he lies on his side, still aching and oddly missing the warmth from Raven, and stares up at the other man with a neutral expression.

Raven starts and throws a sheepish smile, withdrawing his hand. “Sorry, I should have asked first. You seemed like-” His eyes flick to the powered down screen on the table and back. “You were in pain.”

Add blinks once, expression not shifting one whit, almost as if he’d forgotten to make a face at all.

“It’s fine.” His voice is halting and weak, like the words stick in his throat when he speaks them.

They stay there, silent and awkward.

“...Eve gave me your memory logs,” Somehow Esper isn't surprised. “I shouldn't have looked through them without your permission. I'm sorry.”

Some unreasonable part of Add screams he should be apologising for much more than digging into his memories but it’s strangely disconnected from any part that might actually _do_ something. Every part of him feels like magnets straining against one another, repelled away by some invisible force but not at rest, never at rest.

“It's fine.” Is what crawls out of his throat instead.

Raven looks like he might say something else, but closes his mouth and turns his gaze to the open window instead. The ends of his long hair pool in the wrinkles of the covers. Add absently wonders how his hair ended up that absurd length in the first place and reaches out to roll a few strands between his fingers.

They're rough and dry. Of course they'd be, Add reminds himself. The man fights battles for a living and his hair is evidently the least of his worries. In fact, he probably should have it cut what with it being a hazard to his health.

The hairs on his neck prickle and Add looks up to see Raven staring at him curiously. Warmth floods his cheeks and Esper whips his hand close to his chest, then he frowns because this is embarrassment. He shouldn't be feeling _anything_ let alone embarrassment.

Maybe the effects of Eve’s process were wearing off, or perhaps the reemergence of emotion was the result of an interrupted procedure. Either way, Esper evidently could no longer control his actions around Raven.

...This has long since stopped being a chase for his original timeline.

“Go away.”

He doesn't see, but Esper knows the other is giving him a calculating look.

“No.”

Esper raises his eyes to meet the inscrutable gold of the swordsman and he can feel his features tighten in annoyance. Another anomaly.

“You don't need to watch me. Leave already.”

“I said no.”

...Fine then.

Two can play this game.

“If you aren’t moving then I will.”

Esper levers himself part way upright, ignoring the sharp pain in his back that is definitely not his wounds reopening, and is promptly pushed back onto the mattress with a broad hand on his shoulder. There's a hint of something Add can't quite place in Raven’s expression but it’s hard to pick out from the frown that appears on the other’s face.

“Let go.” There’s a strange waver in Add’s voice.

“You’re going to hurt yourself if you move-”

The hand on his shoulder tightens and the time traveller suddenly feels trapped.

“Let me go!”

Something, maybe fright, crosses Raven’s face for a split second and it gives Add enough time to tear the drip out of his arm and jam it into the other’s bicep. Raven jerks back with a yelp and Esper scrambles off the bed, stumbling to the door as fast as he can. Behind him, the swordsman spits half-curses and Esper wrenches open the door to freedom, only to run straight into a woman who squeaks in surprise when she almost drops the tea cups she carries.

In the moment of confusion, another hand grabs the scruff of his neck and peels Add off what appears to be a worried-looking Ara. Esper finds himself staring down a grumpy-looking Elesis, a steaming teapot in the other hand.

“Um… sorry?” Add tries. Elesis seems to glare harder and the time traveller can feel a cold sweat break out over his skin. Must be hot or something.

“Oh, Elesis, stop trying to intimidate the poor boy!” Ara lightly smacks Elesis’s grip away from Add and his heels hit the floor. For a woman a half head shorter than he, Elesis was an intimidating individual. A constant in every universe.

Ara hustles Esper back onto his bed while Elesis follows and starts howling with laughter when she sees Raven tethered to the empty drip with a very unimpressed look on his face. Having one hand _did_ make pulling needles out of forearms rather difficult after all.

Ara lets out a sympathetic noise and Add looks down.

“Don’t go pulling out your drip, okay?” Ara tutts and bustles around, looking for medical supplies.

She’s right, he hadn’t noticed it but dried blood covers his forearm and flows sluggishly from the place where the needle used to be. Add frowns, feeling as if something is off even as Ara cleans away the mess.

Ah, yes. His blood hasn’t been red for a very long time.

“What?!”

...Did he say that out loud?

“What colour was your blood then?” Elesis leans on the end of his bed and suddenly, Add can feel the weight of three set of eyes on him. He fiddles with the edge of his blanket instead, rubbing the fabric between the pads of his fingers.

“Ask Eve.” He mutters sullenly.

After a moment, Raven awkwardly clears his throat and Add hears the rustle of his clothes as he stands.

“Speaking of her, I’m going to go see if she’s done so you two can... look after him. Instead of me. Bye.” He says quickly and exits just as fast.

Elesis lets out an ugly snort and plops on the vacant seat, kicking off her shoes and propping her feet up near Add’s legs. Add’s nose curls, offended.

“I have never seen that guy any more awkward than that and I’ve known him from way back.” She says.

Add just stares at the redhead, feet forgotten, as Ara ties off the bandage on his arm and moves on to replacing the ones on his torso.

“Give him a thousand-man army and he knows what to say but a week with you and he--”

“A week?” Esper cuts in, the skin on his neck prickling. “Was I asleep for a week?”

“Five days technically. We actually weren't sure if you were going to wake up.” Ara says with a touch of apology in her voice.

Then it was certainly possible that the treatment was wearing off. He had to go back to Eve and convince her to finish the process.

“I need to see Eve. She needs to--”

“She doesn't need to do anything, kid,” Elesis is still lounging on the chair, balancing on two legs, but her red glare is piercing and the light touch on his shoulder blades tell him to take the warrior’s words seriously. “We don't know specifics but Eve already gave us a rundown of your condition and you need to realise we’re all strangers.”

Constants and variables hang on Esper’s tongue but he understands the message and quells the instinct to argue and deny. Elesis was right and if Eve had told everyone on the search party his situation as the result of a logical process, there was nothing he could argue against.

Only…

“Where are my dynamos?”

“With Eve,” Ara answers, clearing away the soiled bandages, a ring glinting on her finger. “She said she wanted to study them for a while. She may do some upgrades too, aren't you lucky!”

Add feels invisible spiders prickle his shoulders but tries to force a smile. No sense in hurting their feelings when all they've done is help. Esper isn't sure if his face even makes the right expression.

“I see.”

Ara pours tea. Elesis grins.

 

-

 

It's a different method but the result is the same. Esper joins the ranks of the El Search Team and stays out of the way as much as possible.

The whole world taunts him and it is all he can do to not run away from every happy detail that sprung bright and vivid before him.

Not that he could run, his dynamos were still kept somewhere by Eve and without them, it was futile trying to tear a hole in the fabric of space-time.

And so, his injury and lack of weapon rendered him useless on the battlefield.

Add found himself doing menial tasks, mostly cooking to near disaster had whomever he worked with not salvaged the situation.

He also studiously avoided meeting the eyes of anyone around him, feeling their gazes bore into his skin like worms.

Raven in particular.

That is, until he found himself partnered with him for making dinner.

 

-

 

“Where is that little--”

The avoiding was getting ridiculous now. It wasn’t as if he were actively making an effort in not talking to Add, but Raven thought that the newcomer would at least deal with an hour of proximity for the sake of dinner. One arm made for hard work in a kitchen after all.

In fact, why _hadn’t_ Eve finished repairs yet?

...Perhaps it would be better not to think too hard on that.

The swordsman clicks his tongue and goes in search of the kid playing hooky.

Asking the others is futile, none of the people at camp claim to have seen Add for hours. Somehow he's not even surprised; the traveller has a record of disappearing without notice.

Even so, he decides to check places he thinks Add may have gone.

 

-

 

Add isn't hiding, he’ll say that to his grave.

What he would say is that he found the clearing by the nearby river, far enough from both the battlefield and camp that he could pretend that he was alone once again.

If he closes his eyes, he can dream of a different place, different people. A little house on a hill, a living room, cups of tea, children’s drawings and nasod schematics taped to the walls. A garden of tulips.

There's something missing. Something he can't remember.

The crack of a stick breaking underfoot snaps him out of his fuzzy memories. Raven is there, stoic as the evergreens near the river.

“You found me.” Add says blandly, as Raven sits next to him, uninvited.

“It's not like I can do much cooking without an extra pair of hands.” He shoots back.

“Are you going to drag me off to the kitchens?” Add’s neck is prickling again. The water has a rainbow sheen over it, seige oil borne out to sea on the back of the river.

“No,” The word is uttered soft and remorseful, with enough emotion that Add tears his eyes away from the ceaseless current to look at the other man.

“No. I wouldn't do that to you. You don't deserve that.”

A small measure of incredulousness bubbles up in Add’s chest, a side effect of not fulfilling the treatment, and he quickly strangles it.

This is a game Raven plays, Add knows. Patience and distance - enough to either draw one closer or push them away. The swordsman is clever, ruthless, he’ll sink his teeth into any sign of weakness and tear his victim apart. The only way to win is not to play.

Add loves a challenge.

“Eve let you all read my memory logs, I presume.”

Raven lets out a breath through his nose. “Not everyone.”

“Just you.” It explains the apology.

“Just me. Eve did tell the rest that you’d been through many other dimensions.”

Bitterness boils up and it escapes the effort he makes to dampen it. “Did she tell you I destroyed most of them when I left?”

A hardness enters Raven’s eyes, made of accusation and disappointment. “No. But you didn't wreck them all either.”

He hadn't, but those worlds had _deserved_ to be preserved. The constants there had variables that fell in their favour and they all did not include Diabolic Esper. The broken-hearted tyrant. The monster.

“Were you trying to make up for the worlds you broke?”

There it was. The words seize Add’s lungs and throat, stabbing deep into the recesses of his chest like pieces of broken glass. He forces his hands to relax and pry numbed fingers from his knees. Little crescent-shaped marks crease the material of his simple, borrowed trousers.

“Who said the worlds I left alone weren’t broken?” Esper rasps, still staring forward blindly.

He made his mistakes. A pile of what-ifs that crowned the mountain of lifeless bodies lost to the void between universes, and Add - insane with perfection, with finding the perfect timeline that statistically must and does exist - will keep searching. Would have kept searching. A shattered heart demands healing, whether it came from satiating a burning desire or scorching it into something new.

Or maybe this was just an aside. Trying to erase the problems within himself and not his circumstances. It's a stroke of genius if he had the foresight to go through with a procedure for angels and come out less of a monster than he was already.

If only he were smarter, more ingenious. He’d be home already, reading books in the sunny alcove in the living room, brewing tea in the small kitchen, and baking herb cookies with his mother; portals and libraries and fathers out of sight and out of mind. Maybe none of _this_ would have happened. There’d be no search party, no thief. No person he’d ruin himself for.

And yet this fool beside him continues staring, eyes searching for _something_.

“I think the fact that you tried is pretty amazing.”

Esper starts and turns to meet Raven’s gaze.

“I-I mean, _time travel_ and proving that the multiverse theory exists? I think those are already pretty big achievements.” There’s a hint of victory in Raven’s eyes, even as he back pedals with his words.

“I didn't accomplish a single goal I set out to do,” Esper’s voice is thin and reedy, verging on breaking. “All those worlds, every timeline I went to. They were all f-failures- I couldn’t-- I-I didn’t-”

“So you up and left, breaking all the hearts you had in your hands while you were at it. I bet you thought it'd hurt them less or something.”

Ice washes over Esper’s skin, a soft part inside his chest twisting at the words.

“You have no idea what it's like, to fail so many times you forget the number.” He says, coldly.

“I bet it feels a lot like waking up every day knowing you've committed genocide.”

The gentle smile on Raven’s face is exhausted, the fine lines in his dark skin more pronounced than his youth should be. The weight of an innumerable number of deaths - for that was the definition of destruction of their magnitude, to have that much blood on their hands - pressing down unceasingly every day for the rest of their wretched lives.

How does he do it? Add wonders, barely able to breathe past the tightness in his chest. He can’t understand. He can’t _understand_. How can this man, in every world, every timeline, find purpose. Find the will to stand after suffering over and over. What shining light is there for him? The constants are there, grounding and defining him; he never could save a single person before meeting Elsword, nor resist the pull of solace within destruction.

Perhaps the question shows on his face, or maybe Raven has a mind-reading ability.

“I tell myself I can do better every time I think I should give up. Or I don't deserve this life.”

It strikes Esper then, that Raven never had variables he could manipulate like him. There was no hard reset, no cutting of losses and running away to another dimension where he could gamble against the odds again and again. All his variables were constants.

The persistence of this man was baffling.

Was that what he was doing wrong? All his calculation and speculation resulting in errors upon errors because of a lack of _persistence_?

(When reality is a series of similar details that all waver and wander like water down a river, Add thinks he can be forgiven for putting his own life into a bank of videos stored deep in his dynamos.)

( _why would he want to do that? what did it serve to replace the old with the new, even if it didn’t always work?_ )

Esper’s mind swims, unstable with the idea of the fault of his predicament lying solely within him. Neither the constants nor the variables were his problem but himself? Was he solving equations upon equations wrong and running away to a new set of numbers when they didn’t produce the results he wanted?

 

_(what if that very first world he travelled to_

 

_was his all along_

 

_and he broke it in a fit of childishness?)_

 

Bone-deep horror courses through Esper, crushing his lungs to dust and grinding his heart into powder. All those worlds, all those constants. Not one of them deserved to have him contaminate the land he set foot on, not one of them needed him because he destroyed the very world he was supposed to _have_.

There is a warm palm on his cheek.

Esper blinks and he feels his lashes bump against a thumb that brushes away wetness on his face.

“Wh-” The question hiccups out higher than he wants as Esper realises he’s _crying_. He’s not sure when Raven shifted closer to him but the older man wipes away the blurring in his vision and rests his forehead on Add’s, almost as if to say

 

_I understand._

 

Something breaks within Esper, a part of him he didn’t know was brittle and gnarled and upset at the universe, and he begins to cry in earnest. Whatever treatment he’d fooled himself into having is washed away in his gladness that perhaps he’s not alone in wishing for a what-if from long ago, that is was _okay_ to keep looking for it but not in the past.

“I’ve got you,” Raven murmurs, wrapping his one arm around Add as he’s hugged tightly in return. “I get you.”

 

-

 

It takes Add three years to adjust.

He's a stranger to intimacy still, but it gets better every day. The way he curls his fingers carefully within Raven’s is starting to be a familiar occurrence.

Raven holds every part of Esper gently with both his hands and the time traveller is glad that even after all the battles that scarred the swordsman’s body and mind, he still has the ability to be tender and kind.

Esper’s touch is kinder too, not all nails and bones and jerky movement belying his instability. Emotion softened his heart, letting him live on in a single timeline for longer that he had ever lived before.

Add kisses Raven the first time on a burnt out battlefield. It tastes like ash and iron but Raven wraps his arms around Add and kisses back again and again until the overheated machine limb is as cool as his skin.

He doesn't know what he did to deserve any of this but Esper isn't complaining. He wipes away the tears that tell of how happy he is.

 

-

 

On a warm spring morning, on the outskirts of Elder in a little, well-furnished house at the edge of the woods years in the future, a name is breathed into the curve of a time traveller’s spine.

His name.

_'Add.’_

 

 

 

_-_

 

fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, I know Add's name is different but i'm electing to ignore KOG's awful ass naming


End file.
